The Nature of Difference Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics

The Nature of Difference documents how distinctions between people have beengenerated in and by the life sciences. Through insightful commentaries and a wide-ranging selectionof primary documents by the editors, it charts the shifting boundaries of science and race throughmore than two centuries of American history. The documents, primarily writings by authoritative,eminent scientists intended for their professional peers, show how various sciences of race havechanged their object of study over time: from racial groups to types to populations to genomes andbeyond. The book's thematic and synthetic approach reveals the profoundly diverse array ofpractices--countless acts of observation, quantification, and experimentation--that enabled theconsequential categorizations we inherit. The documents--most reproduced in their entirety--rangefrom dictionary definitions of race published between 1886 and 2005 to an exchange of lettersbetween Benjamin Baneker and Thomas Jefferson; from Samuel Cartwright's 1851 "Report on theDiseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race" to a 1950 UNESCO declaration that raceis a social myth; from a 1928 paper detailing the importance of the glands in shaping human natureto a 2005 report of the discovery of a genetic basis for skin color. Such documents, given contextby the editors' introductions to each thematic chapter, provide scholars, journalists, and generalreaders with the rich historical background necessary for understanding contemporary developments inracial science. Evelynn M. Hammonds is Professor of the History of Science andProfessor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is the author ofChildhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930. RebeccaM. Herzig is Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Bates College and the author ofSuffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America.